The opening sequence for a TV show is a funny phenomenon. They’re simultaneously absolutely fundamental to the show while not giving you any indication of the quality of the show. Think of Seinfeld, the highest grossing (and best) sitcom of all time, which – catchy scene change bass licks aside – had no ‘opening credits’ to speak of. But then think of something like Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, whose theme I find myself humming periodically and/or whenever I think of the show (that’s how integral it is), even though the show itself was kinda forgettable. (Unlike his other two major shows, which I will get onto in due course).
But a good opening sequence does so much for its show. With a fewnotableexceptions, it usually serves as the most recognisable soundbite for the show. It also serves as a kind of psychological trigger, a repetition of a sonic stimulus that reminds regular fans that “it’s time for your dose of entertainment once again.” But most of all, it sets the tone for the show, both audio-ally (?) and visually.

I watch a lot of TV. Much more than almost everyone else I know, and certainly more than is good for me. So the following list is a collection, and ranking, of the TV opening credits that have really made an impression on me. Sometimes they hold a place in my heart because of the quality of the show as a whole, and sometimes in spite of it. We’ll see.N.B. as a musician I will focusing primarily on the music, but when the editing/video construction of the opening credits also serves to make an even better case, I’ll mention it.N.M.* I’m only covering live-action TV in this one. Animated TV would require extensive research into anime, which… ain’t nobody got time fo’ that.*N.M. (Nota Melius) – that’s Latin, bitches. N.M. is to N.B. as P.P.S. is to P.S.

Honourable Mentions

Before I start, honourable mentions must go to the following:
–Community – because a cult show of this quality deserves a mention in any list. It didn’t make the cut because the theme in particular doesn’t really stand out at all. It doesn’t really set up anything for the show, and actually feels inferior to the quality of the show as a whole. Doesn’t mean I don’t know all the lyrics, though.
–The Fresh Prince of Bel Air – because I don’t know anyone my age who *doesn’t* know the lyrics to this. (Except me). I’ve never actually seen the show, so it doesn’t make the cut, but it absolutely deserved an honourable mention.
–Oz – because it’s awesome. And so is the show. But neither the theme nor the show ever made its mark, either on me or on TV as a whole, regrettably. Extremely good show, but not necessarily ‘great’, so it doesn’t make the list.
–Band of Brothers – only really got cut from the list because I didn’t want to include miniseries, as that would complicate things. Don’t let this detract from the fact that it’s one of the best things ever to be put on the screen. This is a rare instance of an opening theme not really being all that hummable – but still, anyone familiar with the series, with the sheer gravity and emotion that it conveys, can’t help but feel a swell of emotion when that choir starts up.
–Breaking Bad– cutting this might be a little controversial, simply because Breaking Bad is (rightly) considered one of the best TV shows of all time. Is the theme recognisable? I suppose so. But not as recognisable as most of the lines from the show. Does it do anything for the show? Maybe – it sets up the idea of ‘chemistry’ and ‘the American southwest’. Does it do anything for me? Nope.

12. Daredevil (Netflix, 2015-present)

Perhaps I only included this one because I’ve just come off a Daredevil binge. The show is extremely high quality, and the opening sequence sets up the atmosphere perfectly. Dark, bloody, mysterious, and most of all, catchy. It lets you know what you’re getting into, and it’s difficult to get out of your head.

11. The West Wing (NBC, 1999-2006)

While visually not all that much to marvel at, it’s the music of this sequence that really makes it memorable. It’s bright, it’s orchestral, it’s grandiose, it’s hopeful, and it seems to transport us right into the Oval Office. It sets us up perfectly for the optimistic, regal atmosphere of the White House in this exceptional (needless-to-say, as it’s Aaron Sorkin) series.

10. Dexter (Showtime, 2006-2013)

This’ll be the first example in this list of a theme outdoing the actual show. While Dexter had an interesting premise, it never really lived up to its potential. The opening sequence, on the other hand… unbelievably catchy, jazzy, smooth song? Ohh yes. And then the brilliant visuals: a fried breakfast, so knives and ketchup (=blood) everywhere; shoelaces like piano wire; suffocating under his shirt – everything about this is a combination of serial killer ideas incorporated into a daily morning routine. It’s a little on the nose, but it’ll make any viewer go “ooh, that’s clever”, and above all, it’s memorable.

9. Parks & Recreation (NBC, 2009-2015)

This might be one of those where I include it because I’m just so fond of the show. If you don’t have good memories of watching this kind-hearted, optimistic, hilarious show, then you have no soul. And the opening sequence captures that perfectly, with the music sounding very ‘American Midwest’ – summery, upbeat, but with a slight military feel. And funnily enough ‘summery, upbeat, and a slight military feel’ pretty much sums up the team of Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson (Leslie’s optimism superseding everything else). Every time I listen to this theme, I’m immediately transported back into those offices, and all the good times I had watching that motley crew, and that’s why it makes the list.

Also, this is the only full-blown comedy to make the list, which… I don’t know what that means.

8. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB/UPN, 1997-2003)

And now we come to the middle of the pack, where it became impossible to rank the next few entries.

It’s pretty difficult to fully describe the impact Buffy The Vampire Slayer had on a generation of young minds, and just how much it stood out from the rest of the herd of teen TV shows. And there’s so much to praise, even within these opening 50 seconds. Those first few chilling notes over a shot of a full moon? Check. That incredible bass lick 0:24-0:29? Check. Guitarmanship that’s firmly rooted in the nu-metal/punk rock days of the late 90s and early 2000s? Check. Smiling teens juxtaposed with images of them killing monsters? Of course. The music and the video combine to let us know this is a teenage high school drama about a kickass girl who slays vampires at night, and that’s that. Let’s do it.
And of course it’s catchy as hell. Anyone who’s seen the show would recognise this with the first note.

7. Sons of Anarchy (FX, 2008-2014)

It’s possible I only stuck Sons of Anarchy here because I wanted to break up the two Joss Whedon shows a bit. But regardless, it’s certainly earned its spot in the middle of the pack. Both visually and audio-ally (??), this opening theme lets you know *exactly* what you’re getting into. Acoustic southern rock about “riding through this world”, and pictures of bikers’ tattoos which rather cleverly morph into the actors’ names. You can have no doubt about what this show is, having seen this clip. In fact, if anything, the intro undersells the high-octane Hamlet that Sons of Anarchy becomes.
It also gets bonus points for being appropriately short, and not dragging the intro out (*cough* The Wire *cough*).
Oh, and of course, the key criterion: catchy as balls.

6. Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-present)

Speaking of catchy as balls, I put Game of Thrones on this list. Wouldn’t you? There’s no opening theme quite like it. It’s a cinematic landscape experience, set to a tune that will make you beat your head against a wall to try and get it out.
Moreover, it’s the most-pirated show in the history of television, so that’s something. The show obviously means a lot to a lot of people, and I know a lot of people who mime conducting while the theme plays. Certainly not me, though. Definitely. I would never ever do that. Nope.

Not much else to say about Game of Thrones because everything that needs to be said in praise of it has been, many times. The one thing I will say is why it’s not higher on the list: it’s a mightily entertaining show, but it’s not the *best* on television by a long way. And equally the opening theme has its downsides: as one musician I know put it, “I can’t believe somebody is making millions for having written that theme.” He was right; it’s not exactly clever. But then, neither is ‘Smoke on the Water’, or Beethoven’s V.
But yeah, I feel a little bit anti-Game of Thrones simply because it’s not as ‘good’ as it is ‘entertaining’, and doesn’t deserve to be at the top of this list. Still absolutely deserves to be on it though.

5. Firefly (Fox, 2002-2003… bastards)

The fact that this is only #5 on the list, I hope you’ll take as an indication that all the rest are impossibly awesome, because I’m a browncoat, and any browncoat should put Firefly at the top of any list (except a list of ‘shows that ran too long’… bastards).

This is another one where my fondness for the theme is entirely wrapped up in my fondness for the show as a whole. But it goes to another level: not only does the country music set up the ‘space western’ premise, but the lyrics (‘…you can’t take the sky from me’ etc.) capture the anarchic, free spirit of Mal Reynolds, his crew, and the whole show.

This is also my ringtone, so believe me when I say the ones ranked above this theme in this list have definitely earned their place.

4. Orange Is The New Black (Netflix, 2013-present)

Orange Is The New Black deserves to be on a ton of different ‘best of’ lists. It’s like no other show I’ve ever seen.
The opening sequence is perhaps the hardest-hitting in this entire list. Regina Spektor singing about animals trapped ‘until the cage is full’, while we’re presented with the faces of actual faces of women in the American prison system – some smiling, some not, some with scars, some with crooked teeth. Plus, it’s (mostly) edited in time with the music. Clever. Spektor reminds us to remember their faces and their voices, and wails, almost desperately, ‘you’ve got time.’ It’s deep, and it adds a really serious tone to this semi-serious semi-humorous show that’s undeniably great.

3. The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008)

You’ve got to keep the devil way down in the hole.

I will openly admit that I ranked The Wire this high up on the list because it’s the best piece of television I’ve ever seen. For me, then, to recall any of the five (!) different opening songs, reminds me of greatness, of a writing quality like no other, and of the most socially incisive drama on television.

It gets bonus points for having five separate theme songs – changing as each season changes focus to another sector of society. Pretty cool.

The whole show has been analysed to death, so there’s not much more to say – let Charlie Brooker say it. But this is certainly an entry where it’s not just my love of the show, but its sheer undeniable quality, that seeps into the opening sequence. Of course there’s the standard showing us clips of what happens in the show – wire taps, phone numbers, police surveillance cameras, etc. but there’s more than that; we see parts of Baltimore that even residents of Baltimore hadn’t seen (or hadn’t chosen to see), all in the opening sequence. That clip of kids throwing a rock at the CCTV camera has for me become as recognisable as ‘I am the one who knocks’.

The show as a whole is a piece of TV which deals with incredibly complex and deep issues of social justice, so for that to be noticeable even within the opening sequence is great.

“When you walk through the garden…”

2. The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007)

If you took a survey of a million TV connoisseurs about the best TV dramas of all time, there are three names that will ultimately rise to the top. Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Sopranos. And I’ve already mentioned the other two.

So why has The Sopranos, which I actually think is the worst of the three, ended up highest of the three on this list? Because oh my god, listen to that theme song. It’s like Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Waits, and Fatboy Slim had a baby. It’s coolness in music form. If you watch all six seasons of The Sopranos and don’t find yourself both singing and dancing along to that theme song by the end, then please do something suitably hyperbolic to yourself.

I could analyse the visuals ad nauseam, but suffice it to say this car journey over the New Jersey Turnpike means more to most people than actually driving home themselves. It tells us what we really need to know: yes, the Sopranos is a show about the mafia, as hinted at by the name, but what this is really about is the daily grind of being a mafioso. The daily trip home through NJ surface streets to see your family. And all the while James effing Gandolfini is smoking a cigar.

This whole intro is just an avatar of coolness.

1. True Blood (HBO, 2008-2014)

What could possibly top a TV list that has The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and Orange Is The New Black on it?

Yeah. True Blood.

This is absolutely an entry where the opening sequence is awesome pretty much in spite of the quality of the show. It’s a trashy vampire romantic horror… so why on earth does it have such a perfect opening sequence?

Everything good I’ve mentioned in previous entries is present here. It has possibly the catchiest of all catchy theme songs, whose lyrics (‘Bad Things’) also hint at the trashy, slightly fetishistic nature of the show. The visual edits set the scene: death (we see decomposing foxes and alligator carcasses); Louisiana (the southern-ness of the setting plays a huge role in the show, and we see swamps and whatnot here); the vampire/gay rights metaphor that’s quite prevalent in the opening seasons (‘God Hates Fangs’); and the bizarre, corrupting duality of the American south – baptisms, children at KKK rallies, gospel choirs, everything. It has so many hints, subject matters, and overtones that I’m tripping over my own words to just try and convey them to you.

The opening sequence tells us more, and in a more stylistic, catchy way, than any other opening sequence on TV. It also probably tells us more than the show does itself… but on a list of opening sequences, True Blood has earned its place at the top.

******

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far! Please feel free to recommend others, disagree, or create your own list.

This’ll be my first post in a while, but, as ever with this blog, I feel I’ve got something to say, and I don’t want it just to reach my Facebook friends (who are probably inundated with posts from me anyway), but I also need more than Twitter’s 140 characters. Still, I’ll try and keep in short and sharp.

Today, 27th Jan, as you might see in the media, is Holocaust Memorial Day. A day when we stop and reflect on the massacre of 11 million Jews, Roma, disabled, Slavs, POWs, LGBT+, and anyone else deemed undesirable by the state of Nazi Germany.

As a historian, I would say today is vital. The primary role of history is arguably to learn from the mistakes, developments, and lessons of the past, and that requires us to grit our teeth and face all the awful things humanity has done.
Yet at the same time, today is not enough. I said the same about International Women’s Day last year – why is it that we devote just one day to institutionally thinking about the historical struggles of women? Why, too, do we deem only one day a year enough to stop and remember the lessons from one of mankind’s darkest hours?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying there should be two Holocaust Memorial Days per year, or that it’s pointless to have one. In and of itself, today serves an effective purpose – as does International Women’s Day, etc.
What I’m saying is that to spend one day a year reflecting on those mistakes and then the rest of the year filing them away in the backs of our minds is ludicrous.

You may think that’s an extreme thing to say, but for me it’s simple: we don’t practise the rest of the year what we preach today. This isn’t just about the Holocaust; it’s about all of history. Today, we use rose-tinted textbooks to glorify what should be condemned. More than 4 in 10 Britons think the British empire was a force for good – forgetting that the modern world’s first instances of concentration camps were created by the British colonists in South Africa. And you have political forces like UKIP arguing that we should spend less time teaching about Western slavery of Africans and more time teaching about Arabs taking Brits from the southern coasts. (Huh?!) In the USA, they have rightly begun to start protesting against Columbus day, which covers up the fact that Columbus enslaved and wiped out peoples with the fact that he discovered the Americas. The Japanese government has finally agreed to reparations with South Korea over the ‘comfort women’ issue (one of the many Japanese atrocities in WWII, and South Korea was not the only nation to suffer) – and all the while, its state-funded Meiji Shrine contains a memorial to 1905 – ‘the glorious unification of the two nations’ of Korea and Japan, glossing over what that unification meant for Korea.

Today, politicians across the Western world are pulling this curious magic trick, where with one hand they stuff platitudes about their own opinions of Holocaust Memorial Day down our throats, while with the other, they dehumanize refugees, ignore them, or lock them up – ignoring the fact that both are part of the same process. Right now, David Cameron is being (thankfully) lambasted for speaking about Holocaust Memorial Day and referring to those stuck at Calais as “a bunch of migrants” in sentences within a few minutes of each other. But for the most part, we let it slide! You have the Daily Mail comparing immigrants to rats, Donald Trump basing a campaign on the idea that Mexicans and Muslims should be physically kept out of the United States, and Denmark making it legal to confiscate refugees’ possessions.
And here’s the thing; no big process in humanity has ever been sudden. Horrors like the Holocaust are the culmination of long trends wherein the Overton window – what is acceptable in public discourse and what is not – gradually shifts. The rise of the Nazis is perhaps the shortest, sharpest historical example of this, but today, it’s evident everywhere. The Jews of 1930s Germany are now American Muslims, Syrian refugees, and so many others – still including, in fact, Jewish people in places like Hungary.
Which is why it really irks me to see neo-fascists refute the idea that they’re Nazis. How could they be, especially if they’re from a nation who suffered under the Nazis? Well, no, you’re not Nazis, per se, but you’re just in an earlier stage of exactly the same process, trudging along the same inevitable road that so many humans in history have walked before.

This issue is especially problematic for the USA, UK, and Russia, who have the distinction of having defeated the Nazis. That allows us to say, in our nationalism-twisted memories, that “we’re not Nazis – we beat the Nazis.” Well, yes, we did, but that doesn’t mean we’re not liable to commit exactly the same atrocities – in the same way as, conversely, the nation of Germany has made its way from the Nazis regime to being a global leader in human rights. Again, we hold the legacy of having defeated fascism in one hand, ignoring the all-too-familiar trends and acts we commit with the other.
Somehow, paradoxically, commemoration of the Holocaust has made us blind to when we repeat the same processes. We’re all human, at the end of the day, we’re all the same – and none of us is above committing atrocities; from U.S. internment of Japanese Americans to even the actions of the state of Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Amazingly, through all of this, you know who stands out? Germany. When I visited Berlin last year, I was astounded and inspired by the memorials over the city. This is a country that has made it a goal to face up to the horrors of its past, no matter how difficult the process, and by and large, they’ve succeeded. Every country has its problems, and Germany is not perfect, but it is the country that has taken the lead in the refugee crisis – for which Angela Merkel was awarded Time’s Person of the Year. Historians and sociologists may pick finer points to argue with me over, but for the most part, Germany stands out to me as an example of facing up to, and learning from, all of its history.

Denying history is unacceptable. Setting aside one day for political obfuscation, and then going back to repeating the same mistakes we condemn, is barely a step removed from that.
So yes, niemals vergessen. We should never, ever forget the Holocaust – not for a single day.

Victor Hugo once wrote, “Music expresses that which cannot be said but cannot remain silent.”
Indeed, when setting up my Facebook profile all the way back in 2007, when asked to list my favourite quotes, I immediately went and googled “Quotes about music” and Hugo’s ended up being my first quote. I have a very strong, powerful relationship with music.

I know I’m not unique in that regard, given how many of my friends are musicians (most of them better than I). But where I do feel I am slightly rarer as a specimen is the way I think and the way I approach the world. Put simply, I’m not what you’d call ‘normal’. Nobody is, of course, but I seem to have strayed from the path of accepted ‘normality’ a little more than most. It’s plain for me to see that I don’t make friends in the same way as other people, nor do I form relationships the same way. I try, but I think I ultimately have a slightly different approach. Equally, in my mental state: I’ve been suffering from some form of depression or other pretty much since I was about 12. My circumstances haven’t enough to provoke that, nor have they been constant enough to count as a factor, and so it must be something intrinsic to me. I overthink things. I resent and obsess over things I shouldn’t.* My assessment of how my own mind works could probably fill volumes, and that’s not the point of this post, so I’ll leave that to suffice.*And before you think, “oh, everyone thinks that about themselves,” believe me, there’s some pretty solid empirical evidence in my own life that does set me sadly apart.

My point is that, while I’m far from unique in connecting to music, I think I’m uncommon in how much value I put in the music that I listen to. It’s worth more to me than anything. I often used to come across as thin-skinned and sensitive when people would talk smack about the music I listened to, and the only response I could give, to my family, to my friends, to my bullies, was, “you don’t know what it’s done for me.” That often didn’t suffice, because they didn’t know, nor understand – and indeed, it’s very hard to explain.

Music (especially listening, but also playing) gives a sense of meaning to my life that I simply cannot find anywhere else. Indeed, as Henry David Thoreau said (my other first ever Facebook quote about music): “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe.” Music – and so in some way, the voices of Ronnie James Dio, Bruce Dickinson, James Hetfield et al, and the lilting guitars of Ritchie Blackmore and Randy Rhoads – has carried me through my darkest moments, in a sense that not even my best friends and parents can compare to. When my school peers started a Facebook page to bully me online (that still exists), I sat and listened to ‘No More Lies’ and ‘Fear of the Dark’ until I fell asleep. When I couldn’t continue with the Cambridge Water Polo team, ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ was there for me. During a particularly heavy bout of loneliness and relationship issues, Tom Petty was telling me “You don’t have to live like a refugee”. Equally, during the best times of my life, the music is what has been there, where people haven’t, necessarily.* After my final A-level exam, I can’t even tell you whether I went home, celebrated with friends immediately afterwards, or what, but I do know that I immediately went and listened to Dio’s ‘Invisible’. My 18th birthday was probably the best day of my life, and I know that I started it with Anthrax’s cover of Alice Cooper’s ‘I’m Eighteen’, and have listened to that every year on my birthday ever since. Indeed, I have pages and pages’ worth of playlists detailing what I was listening to at which point in my life. Music is not only how I recreate these experiences and memories, but it was part of what made them so special in the first place.*I’m not at all saying this is a failing on the part of the people, but simply that music is on another level entirely.

And when I say that music provides “meaning”, I don’t mean that the artists’ lyrics in particular are what speak to me – in fact, almost the opposite. Indeed, Ronnie James Dio, the artist I ‘connect’ to most of all, is famous for his “word-soup” – that is, forming songs out of pretty nonsensical lyrics that sound like they might mean something. Take a few examples:

“We don’t come alone
We are fire, we are stone
We’re the hand that writes and quickly moves away
We’ll know for the first time
If we’re evil or divine,
We’re the last in line”
(The Last In Line)

“Yell with the wind, though the wind won’t help you fly at all
Your back’s to the wall
Chain the sun, and it tears away and it breaks you as you run,
You run, you run”
(Die Young)

And, most famously:
“Holy diver, you’ve been down too long in the midnight sea,
Oh what’s becoming of me?
Ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he’s clean
Oh don’t you see what I mean?”
(Holy Diver)

These don’t exactly have a strong political or moral message. But I feel, really strongly, that they speak to me nevertheless. Where there’s no clear meaning, I still find a way to draw meaning out of it, because, at the very least, someone is speaking to me and it’s clear they’ve got something to say. I still do love music with a strong political/social message – Bad Religion is my hot topic at the moment (see Kyoto Now! for an example) – but at the same time I will still find equal purpose in Megadeth, even though Dave Mustaine’s now a Born-Again conservative who refuses to play festivals with bands whose names offend him.

This is because it’s not just the lyrics that provide the meaning, whether clear or inferred: it’s the music itself. As Hugo said, the music is saying something. I don’t know what, but it’s saying it loud and clear. This is why I feel it applies to more than just my own relationship with heavy metal and hard rock, but to listening to any music really, provided you can build a rapport with it.* Hence why I will still listen to Megadeth despite Mustaine’s political stance, and why, provided you’re focused on the inherent value of the music rather than the people playing it, you can probably justify still listening to Lostprophets. For me, Megadeth in particular stands out as an example, as Dave Mustaine is just so clever as a guitarist and songwriter (example). If you actually sit down and listen to exactly what the guitars are doing, and how they interact with the bass and drums to create an overall picture far beyond any single instrument, it feels exactly like someone telling me a story with fully-formed sentences. Mustaine himself wrote in his autobiography that speaking with another musician creates another level of relationships between two people; it’s a completely new language, a new form of communication entirely. You both share the same understanding of something that can’t be put into words, but which can’t remain silent. I feel equally inspired when listening to a Sondheim song about chrysanthemum tea as when listening to Anthrax about Judge Dredd; they both have this intrinsic connection and shared understanding of this thing called ‘Music’.
This is how I feel when I listen to the music I love. Every power chord, every choice to add in a 9th, every time the vocalist chooses to bite down on his words or ring them out, it says something to me. It means something to me.
*There are, unfortunately, some types of music that I just can’t build a rapport with. That is to say, I think they suck, but I’ll readily acknowledge that they mean a hell of a lot to other people. Still, sorry modern pop and dubstep; you’ve got nothing to offer me.

And here’s the real clincher: the music’s not going to go away, and there’s lifetimes’ worth of music out there to go and listen to. This means that, even though it’s entirely possible, and reasonable, to get bored of listening to For Whom The Bell Tolls every day, no matter how good it is (sorry to my old carpool schoolmate), there’s doubtless new music that you can discover that is equally inspiring and will tell the same unspoken truths. That’s why I’ve called this post ‘A New Lease Of Life’: the phrase struck me today as I was listening to Bad Religion, my new favourite band. Despite being a heavy rocker for years, it took me until 2014 to discover them, and 2015 to get really up to date on their discography. (This always happens: I listened to Black Sabbath for about 2 years before I could really get into their third album, ‘Master of Reality’, but when I did…) I’m really into BR right now, and just like all the music I’ve engaged with before, I’m feeling a deep, powerful connection. I’m finding truth, and purpose, in their music, and it’s a feeling I had been short on for a bit until I discovered them.
That’s not to say that all music eventually exhausts its purpose if you listen to it too much. I find I’m going back and revisiting songs I was listening to in 2009 now, and they come across just as powerful; perhaps even more so thanks to the memories I now have that are interwoven with the music. There is just a specific joy in falling in love with new bands in particular: music may bring me willpower in general, but it’s particularly reinvigorating to find that there exists yet more music to connect to.

What I’ve basically been getting at throughout this post is how valuable music really is to me. I don’t mean to compare it to my relationships with people, as they are two very different entities, but I’ve found that I can engage with music at a core level that I find much harder to do with people. Every piece of music, if I can build a rapport with it, provides me with inspiration, a deep and indescribable purpose and unspoken truths. Music can banish the darkest thoughts and enhance the best memories. Whether it’s simply a new song that I’m connecting to or a new band that I can fully ally myself to, every musical experience really does provide a new lease of life. And there’ll always be music, so I’ll always find meaning.

This post is going to be fairly academia/international relations-heavy, but I’ll try and keep it comprehensive and clear.

Basically, in 1993 a renowned academic named Samuel Huntington wrote a piece entitled The Clash of Civilizations. His argument was that, the decline of the threat of communism, the rise in global connections between states, and evidence of nationalist and ethnic alignments now reaching across state borders, meant conflicts in the next generations would occur not along state boundary lines, but between ‘civilizations’. He identified broad categories that could be used to delineate the world:

As far as international relations theory is concerned, this was a rather unusual proposal. For those of you not from that background, in short there are two major defining paradigms (with subcategories) of international relations:
Realism proposes that the state is the highest actor; there is nothing above telling it what to do, and the state’s choices are defined entirely by its own selfish desires. Everything the state does is for its own benefit, even if that just means the detriment of others: alliances exist only to bolster the state’s security, while wars are waged because the state sees some benefit in doing so (either in deterring a potential threat or the potential gains it can make from winning a war). Power, and power over other states, is key. Realists also pay little attention to the ideological/ideational/cultural factors that influence people’s decisions.

Meanwhile, liberalism, and especially neoliberalism, proposes that states actually seek cooperation, and there are higher-level mitigating factors that can influence the actions of a state beyond its own power needs; specifically international organisations/international law and especially money.

Huntington fits into neither paradigm. Instead, his proposition is largely what IR theorists would call ‘social constructivist’ – which proposes that the international power situation and statistics ‘on paper’ alone don’t define what influences a state’s actions, but rather there are cultural and ideological factors (e.g. religion) specific to the actual people who run those countries, and (in a democracy) those cultural factors also extend to the voters those politicians have to answer to.

The thing is, social constructivism is almost universally seen as an insufficient theory. Cultural and ideational factors (e.g. “you believe in a different god to me, so I’m going to kill you”) alone simply cannot explain why conflicts and agreements between states emerge where they do. The quickest example of this that comes to mind is the USA’s enduring alliance with Saudi Arabia, throughout the 90s and 00s into the present despite Saudi Arabia being an absolute monarchy (not democracy) that is very emphatically a Muslim state (y’know, Mecca and Medinah, women can’t drive, and all that). The only explanation is Generally, social constructivism is extremely helpful to emphasise or reinforce what realist or liberal proposals have already demonstrated, but is otherwise not the first option .

For this reason, Huntington’s proposal – that it would be these cultural and ideational divides that defined the next conflicts that would arise – has, though far from fully discredited, broadly been used as fodder for people to disagree with.

Based on my general ‘appeal-to-authority’ tendencies, I also came to disagree with Huntington, mostly based on the fact that I was taught to disagree with him: it’s the prevailing view. There are certainly a lot of flaws in his proposal: for example, it simply overlooks/ignores any examples that counter the argument, such as the fact that you can’t really fit Russia, one of the biggest players on the world stage, neatly into any category. Nor, as any 15 year old geography student can tell you, should you ever treat ‘Africa’ as a single unit, especially given the continuing conflicts within this African civilisation grouping. Moreover, from a theoretical point of view, to imply that there are character traits specific to groupings of humans that ultimately sets them apart from others – what is called “essentialism” – is a fallacious, orientalist, and ultimately racist proposal. Historians have to shoot this kind of point of view down all the time – the idea that Europeans were somehow better predisposed by their character to modernise before the rest of the world, rather than the historical accident: their access to coal (that had been there for millions of years) that enabled the Industrial Revolution. Even in the modern day, we see this idea – that the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/1998 was bound to happen because of those nations’ historical predispositions to bureaucratic corruption. And yet the 2007 global crash, caused almost entirely by American (and British) greed, showed that such a thing was hardly a unique phenomenon. Where you have bureaucracy, you have people in a position to use and abuse their power discretely.

My point is, the general principle behind Huntington’s argument, that civilizations will clash because they have incompatible values with no possibility of compromise, is flawed.

But here comes the tricky part. It’s going to be a little hard to explain, but bear with me and I’ll try and make it clear.

This blog is written entirely from my point of view. It’s about what I believe, what I’ve learned, and what I’ve discovered. This means that I’m very likely to be proven wrong down the line about a number of things. And while I do not believe that Huntington was right, because his argument was flawed,* at the same time, in the sphere beyond my own point of view, he seems to be being proven right.

*This, I believe, is that rare logical bird known as a ‘fallacy fallacy’ : The fallacious idea that because someone’s argument contains logical flaws, they must be wrong overall.

That is to say, I don’t believe he was right, but everyone else (outside the academic world) seems to be buying into his ideas, and in doing so they make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The rhetoric about foreign policy, around the world, is increasingly turning towards this debate about ‘civilizations’ or indeed ‘values’. In Britain, we have people on Question Time asking “what does it mean for British values when Mohammed is one of the most popular names in Britain?” This question ignores what the facts, the law, and sociology all say – that one’s ethnic and religious background has nothing to do with one’s citizenship. There are a great number of British Muslims who fulfil all the criteria of being both British and Muslim. And yet at the same time, the very fact that this question of ‘British values’ in apposition to Islam is being entertained indicates that people are increasingly aligning themselves along these lines of ‘values’ that are somehow inherent to society.

The rise of the so-called Islamic State is probably the most concrete example of this. They define themselves as a new Caliphate, claiming all of Islam (and therefore Huntington’s ‘Islamic civilization’) under their rule. More generally, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism across Asia further demonstrates this: terrorist attacks range from western China to Bangkok all the way down to Australia. While some terminologies see this as the rise of terrorism as a ‘transnational actor’ (as opposed to the ‘national actors’, nation-states), this may also be seen as civilizations across borders aligning themselves against each other. Indeed, the very fact that the media covers ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ as pretty much synonymous with ‘terrorism’ today shows the extent to which our one civilization is aligning itself against another.

Similarly, we in the ‘West’ have a strong tendency to view ourselves as one civilization; as Akala recently pointed out to Frankie Boyle, we don’t even call Australians, Americans, and Canadians ‘immigrants’ or ‘foreigners’; we treat them as ‘expats’.When Anders Brevik when on a killing spree in Norway, explicitly motivated by a religious fundamentalist ideology, it took far too long for anyone to first refer to him as a “terrorist”. When a white South African comes to the UK to work, she’s a “South African” who “has immigrated”. When a black South African, Nigerian, Zambian or take-your-pick from-dozens-of-other-distinct-nations arrives, she’s from “Africa”, “Bongo-bongo land”, or simply, “an immigrant”. The difference between “has immigrated” and “immigrant” is slight, but the impact it has is huge.

The migrants/refugees situation has demonstrated a similar tendency to align ourselves as European. Aside from those pricks who simply refuse to help these needy people at all, following politics will tell you that even the staunchest UKIPpers generally concede that we, as Europeans (I hate to say it but the thinking seems to be “we, as white Europeans”) have a certain responsibility to take on migrants, to ‘allow’ to them the ‘benefits’ of our society. Objectively, and I’m not saying I believe this, an equally pertinent option would be to put significant pressure on other Middle Eastern (“Arab”) states, especially those on the peninsula, to take in as many refugees as they can. But there is an undercurrent to the thinking of politicians across Europe: it’s “them” coming and hoping to join “us”. Even in Hungary, where the debate rages furiously over closing borders vs. welcoming, the discourse remains the same: it’s people from another “worse” civilization who want to join us, and it’s all about whether we should let “them”. The multinational status of the refugees, as well as the multinational approach of the European union, demonstrates that this isn’t a state-based consideration, but rather seemingly civilization based.

Most often the far right in Britain likes to point out, when complaining about immigration, that they’re not racist, as the immigrants are white. The use of the word “racist” still applies here, I feel, as I’m going to cover in another blog post: but in the meantime, it serves to highlight the continuing divide between “them” and “us”, as you wouldn’t hear them saying those things about Italians, Danish, or German immigrants; just anyone east of the Czech Republic. That is, the former USSR and eastern Orthodox countries, that the Anglosphere considers to be “Eastern Europe” – another civilization divide that Huntington has pointed out.

This post has focused mostly on the West and Islam, as those are what I’m most familiar with and what the discourse focuses on most heavily, respectively. But there is evidence of this beyond my own sphere: the way American politicians refer to the “hispanic” (as opposed to black/white) vote; naturalized US Spanish-speaking citizens are lumped into the same category as those who’ve immigrated from Latin American countries. Malaysia, meanwhile, is torn between ancient Buddhist influences, a modern-day Islamic demographic, and a large portion of the most influential and well-off citizens being Chinese. These divides are starkly highlighted in the politics and media of the country.

Though I haven’t covered them all, examples seemingly abound. But everything I’ve covered has been about how different communities talk about and view each other, rather than a surge in violent conflict between them. Ultimately, this is a question of discourse (see: Foucault). I don’t think there are inherent insurmountable boundaries between ‘civilizations’ in the world; but I do believe it is possible that we are creating and perpetuating these superficial boundaries with the way we see ourselves and define others.

Was Huntington right? Are people destined to clash along ‘civilization’ boundaries now? I still don’t believe so – I don’t think that’s a logical prediction. But enough people seem to be, unconsciously or not, agreeing with him that they may yet create a world in which he is right.

[TW: Bullying. I recount a very, very limited portion of my experience of being bullied as/when it pertains specifically to the subject matter of this article. It may read as trivial, but that’s because it is far from the whole truth of my own or anyone else’s experience. I am not trivialising bullying, nor my own experiences, nor the experiences of anyone else who has ever been a victim. Everyone’s experiences differ, but we’re all affected by them.]

[Before I start this post, I should point out that this is just me reflecting on my own life – I guess a little bit more of a traditional blog post than usual – rather than what most of my posts so far have been, in which I’ve tried to offer insights on the world. But, in the spirit of a ‘traditional blog’, I feel like I really need to write this. As warned above, there’s quite a bit about my experience of being bullied in school, so this isn’t entirely a post about writing music…]

Since I wrote my “first proper song” at the age of sixteen (it was called Freedom Of Speech, and wasn’t too bad, thank you very much), I’ve considered myself a ‘songwriter’. It used to be a full-time hobby for me, to the extent that I would put off work and socialising “because I’ve got a song to finish tonight”. It was my thing, it was what I considered my purpose more than anything else. Worrying about how to structure my albums honestly used to give me sleepless nights. But bizarrely – bizarre because I’m quite an open, self-obsessed person – I barely, barely mention this to people. I’ve dropped in the fact that I’ve written 11 albums’ worth of material as an aside, to friends, but almost deliberately hoping they wouldn’t make any more of it. And I’m trying to figure out why.

It’s worth pointing out before we go any further that I have a lot of experience in many aspects of the music world, from being an avid (and daresay intelligent) listener/examiner of metal, to performing in metal gigs; Cambridge Part II music exams on the mandolin; background jazz at wine & cheese evenings and so on. So when I say I wrote songs, I don’t mean flights of fancy that could one day be turned into actual songs. I wrote full-fledged songs, drum parts, guitar solos, and everything, which, to blow my own horn a little, was better than a lot of music that’s actually been published.* I had album titles, cover art, song credits and specifically patterned track listings ready; basically, if someone gave me all the money in the world right now and told me to go and record them a decent album, I could give them at least seven.*Of course, any musician worth his/her salt knows that success in the music industry requires even more perspiration compared to inspiration than the usually purported 99:1 ratio for genius. You can write incredible stuff but if you’re not willing to go out there and hack away for years to carve a name for yourself, it doesn’t matter. I know that, and this post isn’t about “why I’m not famous”; it’s introspective, talking about my own motivations and why I’ve basically come to a complete standstill with writing songs, something that used to be an all-encompassing passion.

Also worth noting that everything I wrote was almost exclusively heavy metal. Building on my best friend’s yearbook quote “Be the change you want to see in the world”, I, as a metalhead whose taste ranged somewhere between Slayer and Rainbow, set out to create the ideal music for myself to listen to. This is important to remember for later on, as I think taste plays a huge role.
Beyond the heavy metal, I also worked on a sort of ‘side-project’ of guitar solo material, in the style of Steve Vai/Joe Satriani etc. This also played a role later on.

To give you a sense of scale, and just how important this was to me; I wrote my first song in April 2008. I wrote and discarded about 20 that summer, keeping about 6. I wrote maybe 5 more through 2009, one of which is still my favourite ever song to have written, and then suddenly in 2010, my final year of school, things just exploded. I had my first album (consisting of 9 tracks, including 1 instrumental) written by April, then proceeded two write 2 morealbums into June, actually recorded the first album with a studio and band in July, and by the time I arrived at Cambridge in September, I had written, half-discarded, and half-rewritten my fourth album.

But then things slowed down for me: it took me until June 2011 to write my fifth and sixth albums; though at the same time I managed to write an album’s worth of material for my guitar solo side project. Then, somehow, over the next few years, it slowed down to a trickle. I managed to cobble together a seventh album by mid 2012, and an 8th by mid 2013, and then a supposed 9th through the rest of 2014, built mostly on riffs and structures in my head. Unlike the previous albums, where each album had its own distinctive spirit and inspirations and marked a clear turning point in the evolution of my writing process, the 7th/8th/9th albums just took so long and sort of jumbled together in my head. Through a lot of work and remodelling, I managed to turn them each into something distinctive, a proper ‘album’ in each case, but it didn’t come nearly as naturally or easily as it once had.
Moreover, the songs grew steadily less complete. Where every single song had once been written through solos, lyrics, and everything, there were growing gaps in my notes that just said “[verse here]” or even just “[solo section]”.
I’m now working on my 10th, and have been pretty much since March of this year. All the songs are there, and a lot more complete than they have been, but it still feels like a slog. It’s not the same as that glorious year of 2010 when I could just pick up my BC Rich V and churn out some pretty damn good thrash/trad metal.

What I’m trying to figure out is what changed.

First of all, as I noted in my first paragraph, it’s still definitely my hobby, and I’m as metal as ever (I’ve been massively into Venom this year, so go figure) – so it’s not as if I’ve lost interest.* I still consider it something I “do”. I have my bass and guitar next to my desk at all times, and I’m constantly coming up with riffs, structuring and arranging songs etc. But I’ll do about 70% of a song, and then decide to finish it later, or simply… stop. I’ve just lost the will to assemble these massively complex albums, setlists, and things like I used to.*I may be speaking purely from personal experience here, and it may be different for other musicians, but I really feel like when you play an instrument, especially devotedly, you never really do lose interest; you never stop noodling, never stop creating.

Arguably, you could say that my schedule, and my lifestyle, has changed. I’m a Masters student; in theory I really shouldn’t have a load of free time to write an album every two months. And yet, I wrote two albums and rehearsed one with a band during my A-levels, and I wrote 3 more albums during my first year as a Chinese undergrad at Cambridge. The amount of time pressure on me hasn’t changed that much.

You could also say that my goals and dreams have changed since the early days. When I left school, all I knew was that I was leaving school. The future seemed so ridiculously open, and in many ways it was, that I had no thoughts but for what I was doing at that present time, and I was so sure I was going to go “out there” and be a rock star, with no real thought for the practicalities of doing that while studying four years at Cambridge University. All I knew was, I was going to write this music because one day I would play it in stadiums. Nowadays, though, I’m working hard on my degree, so that I can get the kind of job that will make me both happy and self-reliant, like I see my peers doing. I consider myself a student, an academic, and in a broad sense a writer – but not really a rock star. I’ve accepted that those dreams, while beautiful dreams, will take a lot more time and effort to achieve than I’m willing to devote now. So for that reason, my spare time, in which I would usually write songs and assemble albums, no longer seems crucial for building my career in rock.

A huge factor to be considered is the direction I went in, musically speaking. When I wrote my first three albums, I listened to approximately twelve bands in the world, in total. (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Armored Saint, Metal Church, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Dio, Diamond Head, Motorhead). So what I was writing was a distillation of all my favourite aspects of those artists, and I created something I loved. I view early 2012 as a crucial turning point, however. In January 2012, I discovered Rush and Tom Petty, which put me on a completely different path entirely. Thanks to Rush, my writing got a lot more prog rock-esque; but I didn’t like that, as it didn’t fit with the previous six albums I had created that lay neatly between traditional and thrash metal (I called it “transition metal” for the chemistry pun). From there, my musical influences expanded to include just so much more; System of a Down, Nirvana, AC/DC, Saxon, Dire Straits, Rammstein, Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne, more Rush (they’re a very diverse band), Alice In Chains, Bad Religion, Venom, Tool, Queensryche – all over the shop. While these bands do generally head in the same direction, they have very different ways of going about it, and it affected my music writing – structurally speaking, System of a Down have more in common with Nicki Minaj than they do with Metallica, and Iron Maiden probably more in common with big 1950s musical numbers than they do with Rammstein. I got more confused, and I started disliking what I was writing. That slowed the process no end. The influences of these bands are hugely evident in my later writing – the seventh album is Slayer meets Rush meets Rammstein but the eighth is basically Saxon – which, as I say, did not sit well with me in light of the first six, which were pure transition metal.
Even more crucially, in 2012 I became involved in the theatre community. This means that what took up a large portion of my musical focus was musical theatre. I started listening to showtunes and soundtracks, stuff like Cabaret, Footloose, West Side Story, the Last Five Years, and basically anything by Sondheim. I do believe these shows are fantastic, and could go on and on about them, but that’s for another post. The point is, when I had built my musical portfolio on creating something within the “transition metal” framework, suddenly when all I could think about or listen to was musical theatre, it stunted my writing a hell of a lot. Mostly, because it was just too different – I could see no way to write a metal album while incorporating musical theatre influences, unlike the way I did with the bands above.* But also, it just slowed my writing down entirely, because I don’t know how to write musical theatre (though I did give it a go in late 2012), and I wasn’t really listening to metal any more, so what was my muse?*It’d be interesting to give that a go today, though.

But none of this sufficiently explains the trend of the slow death of my writing music. Yes, my dreams and aspirations have changed, but that’s been true pretty much since I started uni, and it doesn’t explain why I kept writing studiously long after I had given up on those hopes.
I haven’t done theatre in more than a year, so that’s no longer stopping me from writing metal. If anything, I’m a better musician now, and I love what I’m listening to just as much as I loved those primary twelve bands when I first started writing, so I should be able to create something, more than one song every few weeks, even if it doesn’t fit into the old framework, and yet I can’t. I’ve lost most of the spirit of the thing, and that’s what really needs to be examined.

I think you have to look back a little further in my history; look back to the roots of the first album. Out of sheer nostalgia, I’ve been listening to it a lot lately (as I said, that was the one we managed to record), and thinking about what droveme to write and rehearse and record that material, especially during my A-levels. I almost missed my school Leavers’ Ball just because I was busy setting up the recording studio.
I may be interpreting this wrong (but it’s my life, so it’s my say) – but for me, there was a distinct set of personal circumstances building up into the creation of that album. I was mercilessly bullied in school for listening to metal. It didn’t help, of course, that I don’t have a very thick skin, but this went further than general schoolyard “banter”.* I can take people shouting “SLAAAYYYEAAARGH” at me in the common room, when, yes, I listen to Slayer, proudly. But this extended to things like anonymous online bullying by people I didn’t know, because my peers had sent my song (I posted one online) to them, specifically for them to trash me; people graffitiing the word “Slayer” on my fucking car – not to mention abuse in the school’s small music community; I found my bass trashed a number of times** and even when I showed my teacher the genuinely enthralling level of musical expertise that can be found in such metal giants as Iron Maiden and Megadeth, he maintained for a good five years that it was just “generic metal” and actively tried to discourage me from listening to it.
Indeed, most of all, my love of metal music served to generally discredit me as a musician in other people’s eyes. (I really don’t want to turn this into a rant about antimetalism, but in principle, how disgusting is that? What kind of a message is that to send to a burgeoning, enthusiastic artist?) Nobody cared what I wanted to put on shuffle, because of course it would be “some metal” (never mind the fact that even the most hypocritical of them loved Run To The Hills). Everyone assumed I must be a “shit” guitarist and/or bassist, despite various music examinations, competitions, certifications, concerts etc to the contrary, purely because I listened to metal. (Again, stop and think about the principle: what an awful thing. To devalue someone just because you don’t like the music they listen to.)*Personally, I think it’s got something to do with my old school’s vehement vigilance against any forms of violence that made the verbal abuse that much more vitriolic. V.
**To be honest, while I took crap from everyone, it was one guy who really led the charge against me, and others mostly followed his encouragement. He just seemed to really hate metal and really hate me. I’m determined not to slander anyone specifically on this blog – absolutely no names will ever be portrayed negatively, so he can remain anonymous. Not all that relevant to the article, but this is me writing for me, and I have to address it. All I will say is that his actions haunt me to this day, and I just sincerely hope to God he’s a better person now and feels some remorse.

So what does all this have to do with me writing music? Well, it’s the fact that this vitriol, this disrespect, antagonised me, but it antagonised me the right way. They drove me to go and prove – first of all to myself, and then if I needed to, to everyone else – that actually, I am a good musician. I can write, and I can play. My opinion is valid, dammit, and I will make myself heard. So I went away and wrote a ton of material and recorded an album that I could be proud of, from a metalhead’s and a musician’s point of view – so I could remind myself that everything I’ve given my life and spirit to, this art and this community, meant something. Metal was worth something to me, and vice versa, and I had just proven it by going away by writing several really damn good albums – even if I didn’t have to say it to those antagonistic pricks at school. In fact, I used their antagonism to fuel some of my lyrics, and used their doubt to keep up the standard of my playing, turning their negative emotion into a positive relic for myself.
This, I believe, is analogous to the ‘hunger’, the ‘drive’ that so many artists refer to when thinking of their breakthroughs. And for me, this ‘drive’ steadily decreased. I could be myself at university, and generally university – with a few unpleasant but rare exceptions on my corridor early on – was a place much more accepting of all tastes. This became even more true as I moved out of my college into a new friendship group in the theatre community, to whom I am forever grateful for just how welcoming and accepting they were.
(And even though my final year of uni was a pretty depressing time, the people I was falling out with, to their credit, never antagonised me about metal and so never spurred me into writing something to prove them wrong – they were just friends who really turned on me. That explains the complete slump I experienced in 2014; it was a depression, but not one I could use to drive me to write better metal.)
So as the years progressed, I simply had less and less to prove. I had fewer people telling me my opinion was invalid because I listened to metal, so I didn’t need to go away and write songs to let off some steam/express some angst/rebuild my self-esteem (take your pick).

The more I think about it, that’s the trend that really stands out. I write less now, because I have less reason to write. And I’m not talking about “building a career” as a reason to write – I’m not really sure how much I entertained the prospect even as a teenager (propping my leg up on the sofa while bassing and pretending I was Steve Harris and the sofa was a monitor). I’m talking about what it meant to me personally, to be able to prove to myself that I could write music like the best of them, and fuck what anyone else said. I grounded so much of my identity in heavy metal fandom, and so by contributing to heavy metal (at least within my own Guitar Pro files and mind) I was able to give value to my own identity.
It didn’t matter if anyone heard it; it mattered that I wrote it. (Funnily enough, the same could be applied to this blog…)
This also explains why, in recent years, I’ve been so reticent, even with close friends, about the fact that I’ve written hours upon hours of decent music; I’m surrounded by good friends these days, and I don’t have anything or anyone to reaffirm myself against.
Now, I just don’t need to write that much any more. I still love it, but I don’t need it the way I did when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. I’m in a much better place in life, so writing music is no longer a safeguard I need against my own social problems. I’ve still got demons, but I address them in other ways, like blog posts. Now, writing music is just… a hobby. And that’s a pretty nice thought to conclude with, actually. Though I have to say, through rose-tinted glasses, I really do miss being able to churn out three solid albums in two months!

JH

P.S. If anyone ever wanted to know, the name that I wrote all this material under and published with my friends’ help – so, in essence, my band – was called Howling Furies. Our one extant album was called Stronger Than Steel. Those are two names I’ll always hold dear.

[TL;DR]: This post is my attempt to propose a good, understandable case for why people in the States vote Republican when it’s so inconceivable to us. Given that America is fairly neatly split down the middle between the political left and right, it may well descend into a diatribe about general left vs. right politics.

I like American politics, a lot. As a (somewhat) British man I sometimes feel like I should focus more on Britain in general, but whereas the circus that is American politics can be fun and exciting to watch, British politics are just depressing. That might be something to do with the level of separation, since I can watch and laugh at, say, Donald Trump’s antics without thinking that I might have to suffer the possibility of that man running my country. (Though I do get to suffer British politics instead. If I’d been two years younger my tuition fees would have tripled – and I’ve always got to keep in mind that I can no longer count on being left alone as long as I obey the law. Cheers, big Dave).

But beyond the entertainment factor, I feel there is a genuine importance in understanding American politics, as it remains for now the most powerful country in the world, and will be pretty safely in that position for another twenty years. Beyond that, it will probably be the most powerful English-speaking country in the world until I die.

So that’s what got me thinking about writing this. I’ve often thought that if the entire world could vote in the U.S. elections, the Democrats would win hands down every time. The Republicans (or Grand Old Party; GOP) and their voter pool come across to us non-Yanks as representative of everything bad about the USA: right-wing bible nuts, corporate greed, and gun-toting maniacs. For so many outside the States, “Republican” means “‘Murica.”

But recently I’ve been thinking more and more about this and I have a few issues.
Firstly: right-wing populism that verges on inciting hate is not unique to American politics in the modern day, not at all. Look at the Front National. Look at the Golden Dawn Party. Look at Julius Goddamn Malema. These are political bodies that have earned a sizeable amount of legitimacy and influence from playing off people’s conservative sides. They cannot simply be dismissed as some unelectable, loud, ‘evil’ voice. The American version of this only takes such a priority in our concerns because, as noted above, America is so powerful. That, and America’s entire self-identity is formed around it being founded on the basis of idealistic philosophy, so primal conservatism in America comes across as more shocking because they so often present themselves as more progressive than traditional European systems. It’s easy to ignore, for example, anti-Semitism in Poland and Hungary, and nobody would be shocked at the idea that some old man named Lord Autumnbottom would vote against marriage equality in the UK, but none of us wants to entertain the idea of a close-minded bigot whose foreign policy consists mainly of inimicizing China as being “the guy with his finger on the button”.

Secondly, and this is the main point of this post: there must be something good about the GOP. I got this idea from watching the West Wing*: early in the second season they introduce a character who’s supremely intelligent, politically competent, idealistic and non-corrupt, and a Republican. I think this was executive producer and screenwriter extraordinnaire Aaron Sorkin, who’s got a reputation for being a bit preachy, seeking to challenge himself, to see if he could write a non-villainous Republican.
*yes, more American politics, but it’s SUCH a good show.

But in doing so he made an excellent point to me, one that is so often lost on us outside the borders of the U.S., probably because of the general slightly left-wing stance of pop culture. Republicans aren’t evil.** The GOP have been a credible, even dominant force, in American politics for 150 years. There’s no way they’re an ‘evil’ party, as it’s statistically impossible that everyone who votes for them – let’s say generally 47-53% of the voting public (or about 25-29% of all Americans) is evil. I personally don’t believe humans are inherently evil or good, so it’s not a case of those who have managed to restrain their evil side through education and practice (as Xunzi taught) being Demmycrats or those who have been led away from their good side by the constraints of society (as Mencius taught) being Republicans. Statistically, there’s about an equal number of ‘good’ Republican voters as Democrats. The nutbags like Dylan Roof and Kim Davis who seem emblematic of the Republican votership are a stark minority: they simply have to be. If they weren’t, then American society would have broken down into sectarian and race wars a long time ago.
**I am aware of how stupid and obvious this sounds; but it’s amazing how easy it is to get that impression of them if you live outside the States.

But that’s not how it comes across to us in other countries. The combined influence of the Christian right and corporate money-lenders in the GOP is hypocritical at best, their policies on gun control make literally everywhere else in the world look progressive, and their media mouthpiece, Fox News, would probably convert to Satanism if Jesus ever came back and endorsed Barack Obama. Basically, so many of their politicians are utter shits (“legitimate rape”, anybody? Committing treason to try and block the Iran deal?)

SO, what on earth would provoke approximately 1 in every 2 voters to vote for them?

Like Sorkin above challenging himself to write a decent Republican character, this is me challenging myself, and will require a bit of mental gymnastics. I’m trying to understand what the other side (not “the enemy”, but “the other side”) thinks.
For this, it may be worth a brief explanation of my own political leanings. I used to be apathetic, and with that apathy came a general dislike of those annoying left-wing activists and protesters. I wasn’t strictly right-wing, but I was a strong believer in the free market and individual freedoms. I didn’t like the phrase “right-wing”; I would definitely have classed myself as a libertarian. I still think Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ is an extremely well-written book. But over my time at Cambridge, I became much more socially aware. My libertarian ideal of individual rights, I came to believe, had to be extended to those who needed those rights for protection against the injustices of our society: the oppressed, the poor, and anyone who wasn’t white, cisgender, heterosexual, and male. To that end, I started to think, government regulations and safety nets were necessary. Over the course of the last few years, especially the run up to the British election in May 2015, I became pretty much middle-of-the-road left wing (if a bit apathetic still).

So, what reasons can I see for someone to vote Republican in America? (Note: I’m not endorsing these. I’m just trying to put myself in other people’s shoes).
What I’ve realised is that it’s very very often NOT the whole package that your average voter is attracted to. With such contradictions and hypocrisy in the party, there’s no way it could be the whole package: people generally are smart enough to see when they’re being so duped.
No, it’s not the whole package: it’s the fact that everyone has priorities. Some interests supersede others. This was another point illustrated on the West Wing: when one of the main characters argues with his friend, a gay Republican senator who still votes to block marriage equality. When grilled by the main character, which ultimately becomes a question of “how can you be in this Party as a gay man?” the senator responds that he is not, first and foremost, a gay man. He is a strong believer in local government, in a strong national defense, and in the free market, and as a patriotic American, those things are more important to him than his rights as a homosexual. Similarly, from the 1960s to the 1990s, the USA created the most expansive and sufficient middle class in history, and those effects are still around today. Many of the people on the poor side of that middle class are still well-off enough, such that benefits and welfare cuts while the super-rich are getting tax cuts don’t matter to them as much as, say, an assertive foreign policy. Equally, gun rights activists don’t support Republicans for the right to kill people, but they’re attracted by the strong libertarian platform put forward by the GOP (as Ron Swanson put it: a man’s right to fart in his own car) and what that means for gun rights: the rights of the individual over the rights of the state.

It’s also worth considering, from the GOP-voters’ point of view, what the alternative is. If you’re a Christian, like a huuuuuuge number of Americans, even if you’re pretty middle-of-the-road, non-interfering and not a Westboro militant, but still proud of your faith, then voting for the Party who are going to promote and value your faith which means so much to you is probably just as favourable an option as voting for the party who say they’re going to do a better job of feeding the poor (and other Christ-like stuff), but who also say that your religion, as a good American, has as much value to the state as the religion of the people they’re currently carrying out air strikes against.*** If you’re at all against any kinds of liberal values, like drug legalisation, equal rights for the LGBT+ community, or multiculturalism (and a lot of people are against at least one of those kinds of things – NEVER underestimate the pull of social conservatism), then in each instance, the liberal party becomes increasingly unfavourable.
***For the record, there are obviously good Christians on both sides of the aisle. And good Muslims in every country.

Speaking of being increasingly unfavourable, that’s really one of the key sticking points about the left (as I imagine it from the rightist point of view). I remember it in my own case, becoming increasingly left-wing up until half a year ago: as a ‘leftist’, I felt this overarching sense of moral superiority. For a while, I simply couldn’t fathom how people could be voting UKIP, or Tory – couldn’t these people see what they would do to the country? Don’t they care about the poor, the hungry, the refugees? Oh well: if they don’t, they must be morally inferior to me.
But then imagine being on the right-wing side of that. Imagine being constantly bashed on social media for “not caring enough”, when in fact you probably try to care a lot, and try to be what you believe a good person is. It’ll make you resent the other side all the more.
And that’s another problem with the left-wing: conservatism tends to stay in one place on the conservative-progressive spectrum, but it’s really hard to define the other end of the spectrum. There’s a lot of in-fighting in the left, with people holding pretty progressive views being condemned by people who define themselves as even more progressive. I consider myself pretty darn liberal but I do believe there’s a point ultra-progressiveness just becomes a waste of time (a throwback to my right-wing days). Even now, though, I’m hesitant to say exactly what that point is, because I have a lot of ultra-leftist friends for whom it will nevertheless not be enough.
So for people who fall somewhere between ultra-conservatism and ultra-liberalism, like a lot of the Swing States (at least, on the American version of that spectrum), the smug moral superiority and condemnations coming from the left would make them increasingly resentful.

That, I believe, is that. Maybe all of you reading this knew this already: maybe I’m the only one who up until this point couldn’t really get my head around why anyone would vote Republican. But hopefully it has been useful.

I ought to state again that I don’t agree with many of the views I demarcated above. If I were American, I’m fairly certain I’d vote Democrat over and over again. This has been, for me, a discursive exercise.
Moreover, it’s been an important exercise for me politically, because it’s helped me to understand opposing points of view. All opinions are, after all, of equal value – and funnily enough, that’s the most liberal thing I’ve ever said.

JH

P.S. Pointless trivia: there are two Chinese characters – 手 and 毛 – that look really alike. The first one, shou, means “hand”, while the second, mao, means “wool”, “hair”, or “fur”. For a beginner, the easiest way to distinguish them is that in shou the final stroke flicks to the left at the bottom, while in mao the final stroke flicks to the right. That mao is the same character as in 毛泽东 – Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao. Ironically, though Mao was a notorious leftist (to put it lightly), mao is the character that flicks to the right. I always found that funny.

Though why do we refer to these ideologies as “left” and “right”? Maybe one for another blog post. I really need to go to bed.

Do any of you watch Better Call Saul? You should. It’s an excellent piece of drama (what else would you expect from Breaking Bad‘s Vince Gilligan?) about the eponymous Saul Goodman – Jimmy McGill – in his early days on his path to become a lawyer. Anyhoo, without spoiling it too much, in one of the last episodes of the season one of the characters launches into a brilliant motive rant, concluding with the phrase, “The law is sacred.”

That got me thinking, as it’s not the first time I’ve heard that phrase – and not just in the hyperreality of pop culture, fiction, and drama, but said by real people in real legal settings. It is worth thinking about – what do we mean when we say the law is sacred?

[Mild warning for the rest of this post: I’ll be comparing the law to organised religion. My opinion on religion is based on the assumption that religion, and religious institutions specifically, are man-made. This post neither insists on nor denies the existence of God – a God in which I myself believe – but proposes that religion, not God, is an invention born of human interpretation, human construction, and human error. So if you’re particularly orthodox-religious, you may want to avoid this post. Or, you may want to read on – it’s not that offensive and you may find that having your beliefs challenged is an affirmative experience. Either way…]

So what exactly makes the law “sacred”? Well, it’s worth thinking about what exactly “sacredness” – or sanctity – means. Sanctity is something that, in the religious tradition, can essentially be attached to anything, if enough people agree on it. Much like monetary value, the sanctity of an object, or experience, is not inherent, but is basically a label applied by outside sources. There are examples of this everywhere, from currency devaluation to Li’l Sebastian to, well, so much of organised religion. To an atheist, transubstantiated bread is still just bread. It’s only the opinion of the congregation – the collective will, if you will – that makes it mean anything more.

And what does sanctity entail? It implies some form of otherworldly respect – this sacred object/experience, whatever it be, is due a reverence that we don’t simply offer to other people. It implies that this sacred thing somehow belongs to something greater than us, and so it’s not within our rights to (for lack of a better phrase) mess with it.

You can probably see where I’m headed with this. The whole point of the law as it applies in modern (especially Western) society is that none of us can mess with it. The whole point is that it applies to all of us, and is subject to none of us, because it is something greater than all of us. No-one – as we so often need to point out to our guilty leaders – is above the law.
Moreover, even though the law is entirely man-made, and we don’t have any supernatural beliefs to the contrary, we still afford it this level of respect. In most (especially Western) societies, the law is not viewed as some cheap profession but as a noble pursuit, with a greater level of devotion, qualification, and ceremony accompanying it. And even though the law can be passed by legislators or interpreted by judges, and thus to a greater or lesser extent fundamentally changed by these qualified, devoted people, those changing the law do so in the belief that they’re ultimately building something greater than themselves, something which will apply to them as well as to everyone else, and possibly even to their children. Similarly, you will often hear legal experts talking about the “spirit” of the law, as if there is some ethereal consensus of law that exists beyond our control, and the best we can do in the legal setting is to try and channel the spirit, the nature, of that consensus as best we can.
Even-more-over, on the negative side of things, much like any large religious institution, there exist those in positions of power over the law who will abuse it. They will abuse the authority and reverence afforded their position, essentially abusing the sanctity of the law itself, to their own ends.

So, I hope I’ve established by now that the law is very similar in structure and ethos to a kind of religious institution. But you may ask: if (as I’ve said above) religious sanctity is little more than humans attaching value to something that has no intrinsic value, what makes the law sacred – or just more sacred than religion? It’s the very fact that, unlike religion in today’s society, the law applies to all of us. We depend on the law as the framework of our society, and unlike religious institutions, our society is not opt-in-opt-out (depending on how libertarian you are, that may be regrettable). The law is sacred because the foundations of our society depend on it being so. This is even more true, and much clearer, in the scope of international law – governing interactions between countries: the system only holds up if every party agrees that decisions are binding and universally applicable. For us, the law must be treated as sacred or else it doesn’t work.* And, seeing as we’re not currently living in the world of Mad Max, it seems to be working relatively well. Of course it could be working better, because there will always exist some blasphemers out there, but most of us are holding up our end of the bargain.
*this concept has been explored by much finer minds than I, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the form of ‘The Social Contract‘. Look it up.

It’s late, and this post is getting long, so it’s possible I’ve begun rambling again. Ultimately, the law is indeed sacred; its function and value lies entirely in its universal influence and the respect we give it. It may not be ethereal, or supernatural, but somehow its tangibility lends it even more authority.